Introduction to The Harold M. Schulweis Institute Library

During almost 64 years in the rabbinate, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis has established a unique global legacy of scholarship, creativity, and spiritual expression. Through his initiatives and innovations in Jewish communal life, worship, Jewish ethics, ecumenical dialogue, and Jewish learning, Rabbi Schulweis has enriched the lives of Jews and others around the world. His work has shaped modern Judaism. In order to preserve and expand this legacy, his congregation, Valley Beth Shalom, has created The Harold M. Schulweis Institute — A Center for Jewish Learning.

Fundamental to the Institute and its mission is an on-line library at www.schulweisinstitute.org that collects, preserves, and disseminates Rabbi Schulweis’ writing and oratory for future generations through the largest congregation of his distinguished career — the world wide congregation of the internet.

The Harold M. Schulweis Institute Library has been built as a living legacy in the spirit of
Rabbi Schulweis’ vision of Jewish life. Its mission is to preserve and make available his essays, articles, transcripts and digital recordings of sermons and addresses, selected letters, and monographs.

The Collection

The library contains the world’s largest collection of Rabbi Schulweis’ material legacy — an online library of over 750 catalogued items including digital audio and video recordings of his sermons, lectures, classes, interviews, and award ceremonies, distinguished recordings of many of his colleagues, and a large collection of digitized readable copies of his sermons, poetry, monographs, and published and unpublished articles and manuscripts. All are indexed and accessible through keyword or category searches from the “Online Libraries” tab at the top of the website home page. Building the on-line library is an on-going effort of the Institute as more recordings and documents are found and processed for on-line access. All library content is available, with attribution, for downloading, reprint, or other usage, at no fee.

A Personal Message from Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis

Another reason d’être for respecting and appreciating the potential impact of the library on each of us is this profound personal quote from Rabbi Schulweis:

“I was raised in a highly intellectualized universe. In that world, the text was all. The written text was to be studied, and transmitted. The book was sacred. If you dropped it, you quickly picked it up and quietly kissed it. If the book was left open, it was immediately closed, for left open it was an insult to the word. A book accidentally placed on the shelf upside down was an offense to be righted. The library was the sacred center of the home. All of my friends had libraries. When Malkah and I were married, one of the first purchases was an inexpensive series of glass bricks which would hold up the shelves of books.”

- Harold M. Schulweis Rabbi

The Harold M. Schulweis Institute Library has been created to preserve these worldly values of Rabbi Schulweis.

Preserving the Legacy

The Audio, Video and Document Libary

The Schulweis Institute Library project has resulted in the world's largest collection of Rabbi Schulweis' material legacy -- an online library containing over 750 digital audio and video recordings of his sermons, lectures, classes, interviews, and award ceremonies, and a large collection of digitized readable copies of his sermons, poetry, monographs and published and unpublished articles and manuscripts. Building the on-line library is an on-going effort of the Institute as more recordings are found and digitally processed, making Rabbi Schulweis' scholarly legacy available worldwide at:www.schulweisinstitute.org.

The Schulweis Institute Library also houses his book library collected over 50 years of rabbinic life.

Extending the Legacy

Inreach & Outreach Advocacy

Rabbi Schulweis has taught that Judaism is simultaneously personal, communal and global—with a mission of Tikkun Olam, repair of the world. The Schulweis Institute sponsors programs and social actions that reach the individual through the Healing Center and the VBS College of Jewish Studies, go beyond the synagogue to the community’s poor and hungry though the Chesed connection, and globally extend Rabbi Schulweis’s legacy through Jewish World Watch to actively address the crises in Darfur and the Congo. The Institute funds Jewish educational programs by enabling the pioneering use of tablet PC’s for student learning, instruments for Day School students, and the training of young Jewish social advocacy leaders in college communities.

Enhancing the Legacy

The Creative Arts Program

Rabbi Schulweis has always been deeply committed to the place of the arts in Jewish life, and most particularly, in the life of the synagogue. He has taught us that creative art is meant to arrest our attention, to remind us that there is more to life than surface appearances. Quoting Rabbi Schulweis, "Art respects the emotional life of the individual so that we may reflect upon life values and stop the mechanical flow of events, the impersonality of calendrical chronology and the rote of observances." The Creative Arts program encourages artists in all disciplines to share their gifts with the synagogue community. Composers, musicians, photographers, dramatists, authors and painters have been sponsored by the Schulweis Institute to deepen and share their visions and creations with the synagogue and to "cause us to call attention to the significant merger of our private and communal lives to remind us that we are more than atoms and molecules. We are the light and language of God."